#### A build system for making blobless Debian and mainline Linux kernel for the Asus c201 Chromebook with support for dmcrypt/LUKS root partition encryption
Combined with Libreboot, an AR9271 or AR7010 WiFi dongle, and a libre OS (like Debian with the main repos, the one built by PrawnOS) the Asus c201 is a fully libre machine with no blobs, or microcode, or Intel Management Engine.
### WARNING: flashing libreboot to asus c201 chromebooks that have recently been updated to a new version of chromeOS may leave the device in a non-functional (bricked) state.
If you do not have a way to recover your device by using an external flasher as described in the second part of this page https://libreboot.org/docs/install/c201.html it would be safest to wait until this issue is resolved. I have opened a bug with libreboot, which can be found here https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot/issues/666 If you have any information that may help with debugging, please post it there.
_The install process of PrawnOS does not flash your bios, so it is safe to use along with the default coreboot/depthcharge and does not risk bricking your device_
In the world of free and open-source software, the term is used to refer to proprietary device drivers, which are distributed without their source code, exclusively through binary code; in such use, the term binary blob is common.
This has only been tested on a Debian Buster VM, and borrows some components from the host system to setup apt/debootstrap during the build process so I would recommend using a Debian Buster VM to avoid any issues.
Write the 2GB image to a flash drive. Make sure to replace $USB_DEVICE with the desired target flash drive or SD card device. If you're not familiar with dd, check out Debian's
Enabling developer mode is required to install PrawnOS. Note that enabling developer mode WILL ERASE ALL LOCALLY STORED DATA.
### Shut down
First, shutdown and power off the chromebook. Once powered off, hold the 'ESCAPE' and 'REFRESH' (F3) buttons, and while continuing to hold those two buttons, press and release the 'POWER' button.
### First screen
The chromebook should power on and show a white screen, with a message saying:
"Chrome OS is missing or damaged. Please insert a recovery USB stick or SD card."
Log in as 'root', there is no password. Finally, enable booting PrawnOS from USB/SD:
To enable booting unsigned media:
`# crosssystem dev_boot_signed_only=0`
To enable USB booting:
`# crosssystem dev_boot_usb=1`
Finally, reboot or shutdown the system:
`# reboot`
On each subsequent boot, you'll see the 'OS verification is off' screen.
## Booting/Installing PrawnOS
Now you can boot your PrawnOS USB/SD card. After rebooting/powering on, at the 'OS verification is off' screen, press 'CTRL' + 'U' to boot from USB/SD. Or 'CTRL' + 'D' to boot from the internal emmc.
* This lets you install PrawnOS to the internal emmc, an SD card or a USB device
* This allows you to setup root encryption
* Installing to an external device allows you to try PrawnOS without removing Chrome OS or whatever Linux you are running on your internal storage (emmc), but USB drives especially are a much slower experience as the c201 only has USB 2.0.
If you are running stock coreboot and haven't flashed Libreboot, you will first have to enable developer mode and enable USB / external device booting:
Now insert the other USB device or SD card you would like to install PrawnOS on. If you want to boot from the internal emmc, you have nothing to insert!
Note: If you are installing to an external device, the filesystem portion may take a loooong time (20 minutes). This is because we are reading from one external device (the boot device) and writing to another external device. This more than saturates the USB and/or SD bus.
WARNING! THIS WILL ERASE YOUR INTERNAL EMMC STORAGE (your Chrome OS install or other Linux install and all of the associated user data) OR WHATEVER EXTERNAL DEVICE YOU CHOOSE AS YOUR INSTALL TARGET. Make sure to back up any data you would like to keep before running this.
Choose `Install` and follow the prompts. This will ask what device you want to install to and setup root encryption with a custom initramfs and dmcrypt/LUKS if you want.
If you are curious how the initramfs, and root partition encryption work on PrawnOS check out the Initramfs and Encryption section in [DOCUMENTATION.md](DOCUMENTATION.md)
If you run in to any problems please open an issue.
_If you install to the internal emmc this will show a bunch of scary red warnings that are a result of the emmc (internal storage) having a few unwritable (bad) blocks at the beginning of the device and the kernel message level being set low for debugging. They don't effect anything long-term. All C201s have these bad blocks at the beginning of the emmc_
After the partitioning and the filesystem copy is complete, it will prompt you to install either the xfce4 or the lxqt desktop environment, sound, trackpad, and Xorg configurations
It will also prompt you to make a new user that automatically gets sudo privileges.
After reboot, remove the external media you had booted from originally. If you installed to the internal emmc press `control+d`, if you installed to an external device press `control+u`
Now on the C201, insert the drive you wrote the PrawnOS image to. Press `control+u` at boot to boot from the external drive.
If you are running stock coreboot and haven't flashed Libreboot, you will first have to enable developer mode and enable USB / external device booting. A quick search should get you some good guides, but if you're having issues feel free to open an issue here on github.
At the prompt, login as root. The password is blank.
Congratulations: you are done! Welcome to PrawnOS. You should probably change the root password and make a user, but I'm not your boss or anything so I'll leave that to you.
The script `UpgradeKernel.sh` located in `/InstallResources` can be ran be used to copy the kernel, modules, initramfs, and ath9k firmware from a newer version of PrawnOS running on a USB drive or SD card onto an older version of PrawnOS installed on the laptops internal emmc storage.
To use it, write the new PrawnOS image to a USB drive or SD card, boot the laptop to it by pressing `control+u` at boot, navigate to the `/InstallResources` folder, and run the script.
`make kernel_config` cross compiles `make menuconfig` Cross compiling is required for any of the Linux kernel make options that edit the kernel config, as the Linux kernel build system makes assumptions that change depending on what platform it is targeting.
`make initramfs` builds the PrawnOS-initramfs.cpio.gz, which can be found in /build
`make image` builds the initramfs image, builds the kernel, builds the filesystem if a -BASE image doesn't exist, and combines the two into a new PrawnOS.img using kernel_inject
`make kernel_inject` Injects a newly built kernel into a previously built PrawnOS.img located in the root of the checkout. Usually, this will be a copy of the -BASE image made by make filesystem. Only use this if you already have a built kernel and filesystem -BASE image.
You can use the environment variable `PRAWNOS_SUITE` to use a Debian suite other than `Buster`. For example, to use Debian stretch, you can build with `sudo PRAWNOS_SUITE=stretch make image`. Note that only `stretch` and `buster` have been tested.
You can use the environment variable `PRAWNOS_DEBOOTSTRAP_MIRROR` to use a non-default Debian mirror with debootstrap. For example, to use [Debian's Tor onion service mirror](https://onion.debian.org/) with debootstrap, you can build with `sudo PRAWNOS_DEBOOTSTRAP_MIRROR=http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/debian make image`.
crossystem is installed from the debian repos and mosys (a dependency of crossystem, and all around useful tool) is built and installed as part of the PrawnOS filesystem build.
On older PrawnOS releases or other distributions, you can run the `buildCrossystem.sh` script located in `scripts/InstallScripts/` to build and install `mosys` and install `crossystem`
Because PrawnOS started as a fork of devsus-3.14, some of this repo's ancient history can be found at https://github.com/SolidHal/devsus/tree/hybrid_debian
[]() [](http://spacemacs.org)
